Let's try to discuss Wakanda. Is it good or bad?
It's an interesting idea ruined by the reality that Americans worship black people like gods, so they may never be a meaningful villain in fiction.
>>151017652I prefer the idea present in the earliest Black Panther stories that Wakanda has only recently realised the potential of its vibranium and is in the process of developing into a major player on the global stage. There's real conflict between the traditionalist tribesmen and T'Challa trying to drag his country kicking and screaming into the future, which is rarely the direct focus of the stories but rather a strong backdrop.To me, the idea of a nation suddenly and rapidly becoming a technological superpower seems much more compelling on a dramatic level than the idea of a super secret utopia that mysteriously decided not to do anything for centuries.
>>151017652counter-point: US slavery was badcheck, mate
>No, black goys, Uncle Remus is racist!>Have this fantasy where you still chuck spears and live in mud huts but they glow blue!>Remember to keep whitey's attention on yourselves!
>>151017837Yeah this makes a lot more sense.
>>151017837It's also a better link to black emancipation in the USA, suddenly having a lot of power and the freedom to advance, rather than we wuz garbage.
>>151017652It is an absolute monarchy determined by rite of combat backed by a semi-invicible supersoldier ordained by ancestor based spiritual practices.Its like the whole history of political thought warns us about these kinds of things. You tell me.
>>151017652Wakanda creates narrative problems. So does Latveria but to a lesser extent. I can understand why writers choose to use fictional countries. But putting advanced countries in an area with third world countries creates issues. As does having super scientists in a world where cancer exists.
>>151018319The main geopolitical issue with movie wakanda is that the nation is incredibly hypocritical. They had the means to stop european colonialism and they didnt so they dont get to use said colonialism as a political tool now. The fuckers had the means to empower neighboring countries and establish a counterbalance to european power but they didnt because they didnt feel like it or something. If they are truly this advanced surely they could have stood their ground without being hidden from the rest of the world. Killmonger was essentially right in his critique of Wakanda in the first movie.
Anything that leads to KANGZ type delusions is bad
>>151017652It's a made up magic kingdom created by two white Jewish guys in the 60s to fleece milk money out of a growing number of inner city kids.
>>151017652It turns out when you make someone just to pander and virtue signal it's going to be not good. >>151017837This would be a lot better. >>151018319That's true, though I will say Latveria aren't really supposed to be good guys so it makes sense that aren't helping anyone out/may be contributing to the situation.
>>151018972That's what happens when you want your cake and to eat it, too.> White people bad because we wuz defenceless and taken advantage of > We wuzn't defenceless nor taken advantage of!> White people still bad because..... WE WUZ!!!!
>>151017652The Congo is sort of in the same boat with a whole bunch of natural resources and guess how it's doing?
The Black Panther movies would have been much more interesting if Wakanda was less of a paradise and more like a modern city with all its intrigue and political squabbling. That one gorilla tribe (cmon Disney, dont make me call them the gorilla tribe) being hardcore traditionalists would have been much more interesting if they were generally integrated into Wakanda proper and they actually dressed in modern african clothing rather than behaving as if they were still in the 5th century. Many ultraconservative groups today have no issues with adopting modern cultural norms especially around etiquette and fashion. The point of the Wakanda movies should have been strict intrawakandian drama with a much more fleshed out perhaps a little bit dystopian city with a ton of different clans fighting for political supremacy.
>>151019533Don't forget that M'Baku and his tribe were originally an oppressed religious minority in the comics, basically 19th century Mormonism mixed with the Amish, and were basically Wakanda reaping what it sowed in how it treated others.>>151019277Much like the underlying issue with modern X-Men, you can't have a power fantasy and an oppression narrative at the same time, one has to give way to the other.>>151018972BP1 is far more nuanced than most people give it credit for. Not only is Killmonger right, he's also a complete hypocrite, a foreign imperialist, and he's completely wrong while projecting his personal feelings on an entire society.
>>151020263>you can't have a power fantasy and an oppression narrative at the same timeBut that is the driving force of so many media targeting kids: The 'society treats me badly because I am special' is an age old proven trope among angsty and socially awkward teenagers. See Harry Potter, see Naruto, etc.
>>151020552Not quite, those start as oppression narratives but turn into power fantasies. Potter is also changeling fantasy which is its own thing.
>>151020621I mean, the oppression fantasy is simply the misunderstood by society aspect. It never really goes away. In most of these types of narratives, the main reason the protagonist group is oppressed is precisely what makes them powerful or special in the first place.
>>151020647The oppression isn't even consistent in Potter's life, it's only the Dursley's that treat him like shit.
>>151017652It's really obvious that he's only watched the movies, because he's acting like these are big revelations.These aren't flaws. These are features.Wakanda Forever.
>>151019533Whatever happened to Man-Ape anyway? I used to see him a lot in old 70s Avengers, then he just sort of disappeared.
>>151020759Thats not true, there are several points through the books where the whole school hates him for being even more extra special than the rest of them. Like for being the chosen one, for speaking parsel tongue, for being the one to reveal the return of Voldemort to the world, etc.
>>151017652The idea of an advanced African nation still using spears is kinda racist I'd say.
>>151017837This made sense in the 1960s but is impossible in 2025. The low-tech hidden society doesn't work in the era of satellite imagery. Keeping T'Challa as the agent of modernization makes a mess of the country's history.
>>151020887The whole aesthetic from the movies is so incredibly lazy. Instead of trying to imagine how a super advanced african nation would look like, they just have hut people but with super advanced ships and a couple of futuristic buildings. It genuinely looks as if only the royal family is super advanced and the rest of the population lives in utter squalor.
>>151020873Well, calling a black superhero man-ape doesnt seem to mesh well with current sensibilities whether you agree with it or not.
>>151020887The spears are ceremonial. They have guns and stuff too.The movies didn't show the real hatut zeraze, or the standard wakandan military, or the spaceships and the pantherzords or any of the other shit they keep around.
>>151020931But he wasn't a superhero, he was a villain. Call him Gorilla King or something.(Maybe not Gorilla King, because it's a very DC name...)
>>151020915i'd love to see latveria depicted with the same approach as wakandacivilians wearing waistcoats, kilts, and berets, and speaking with swedish accents. doomstadt has castles, thatched huts, and wooden churches with maglev trains running through them. disputes are settled by duels with lightsabers, doombots riding in to battle on armored sheep
>>151017652Wakanda's tech would make more sense if it were the result of trading vibranium to various engineers and scientist through out history. It took centuries of intercontinental trade just to get firearms but wakanda figures out cold fusion totally isolated while also somehow having superior melee combatants despite their tech making fighting with fucking spears obsolete.There needs to be give and take in fantasy/sci-fi cultures. Elves can't outclass dwarves in both magic and strength because then it just negates the entire point of having a separate cultures.
>>151017652It would be good if it was called Mekanda, and everyone there was me.
>>151021382Wakanda didn't figure shit out. They are the ultimate Mary Sues, as they get to sit on the only deposit of Vibranium on Earth, AND they are the site of where aliens crash landed, giving them access to alien tech to kickstart their technological revolution before everyone else.It's the type of writing that glazes Africans to the hardest, because real life Africa is a shit hole.
Priest did it well, building on what came before.Until T'Chakka's reign Wakanda was kept hidden by the environment, with a little help from the brutal spy network, and the spy network also ensured that in terms of technology the army had juuust enough "roughly modern" military tech to keep an eye on things and hold off any units that wandered onto Wakandan territory. Not savages, not a Utopia. Then T'Challa was sent out to do a Bruce Wayne education, learning as much as possible from as many top centers of learning as possible, before returning home and giving his country an industrial revolution on steroids. So you had a culture with bleeding edge technology, but anyone over the age of 13 remembered when they had NONE of that stuff. It led to interesting stuff, where the country was the Marvel equivalent of a nuclear power, and all the inhabitants WERE proud of that, but at the same time they could march up to their King-Priest and say "hey you need to enforce a moronic tribal law requiring you to kill that young woman you think is neat. Tribal Law, your highness. You gotta."Hudlin turning Wakanda into a peace-and-love always-was-a-Utopia was one of the dumbest things anyone at Marvel has ever done, and fuck everyone involved in letting him make it canon.
>>151017652>Let's try to discuss Wakanda. Is it good or bad?they needed to keep it an isolated kingdom with the vibe of a lost colony of atlantis from a pulp story, it being the focal point of global black lives matter (tm) is dumb and makes no sense>>151019533>The Black Panther movies would have been much more interesting if Wakanda was less of a paradise and more like a modern city with all its intrigue and political squabbling. That one gorilla tribe (cmon Disney, dont make me call them the gorilla tribe) being hardcore traditionalists would have been much more interesting if they were generally integrated into Wakanda proper and they actually dressed in modern african clothing rather than behaving as if they were still in the 5th century. Many ultraconservative groups today have no issues with adopting modern cultural norms especially around etiquette and fashion. The point of the Wakanda movies should have been strict intrawakandian drama with a much more fleshed out perhaps a little bit dystopian city with a ton of different clans fighting for political supremacy.potentially interesting and good basis for a story which means it's definitely not getting a movie/tv treatment and only in comics if we luck out
>>151021672>potentially interesting and good basis for a storyI always thought that BP made for a much better local style story (kinda like Batman) with BP being this crimefighting/police force in the generally somewhat dystopia ultra advanced wakanda. Maybe this overlaps too much with Batman but I thought that what was interesting about Wakanda was precisely the fact that you could have this hyper advanced society where different families/clans are fighting for control and BP has sort of to try playing the political game by day and the vigilante one by night. Maybe some of the clans are trying to get in business with foreign arms dealers but BP cant just call them out in broad daylight or something.
>>151021540Hudlin is single handedly responsible for dragging not only Black Panther down but also Storm down. The amount of damage that man has done because of his emphasis on being afrocentric (which was a mere 3 years before the Obama years kicked that into overdrive) cannot be understated but has to be due to comics fandom being afraid of criticizing, even constructively, media centered around blacks.
